Shadow and Light by Peter Sartucci

Author:Peter Sartucci
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781733574501
Publisher: Peter Sartucci
Published: 2019-02-27T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Two hours later Kirin eeled through layered spells in a controlled lunge and dodged between three zigzagged pillars flaming with even more spells. His heart pounded with the excitement of a bold trapeze move. Some of these spells carried stinging sparks or disgusting odors if he set them off.

I’m doing this! he silently exulted. His Shadow surged and struggled inside his chest as he denied it one tasty spell after another.

He glided under a bar hanging from threads without jostling the glass fishermen’s floats balanced atop it, crab-crawled through a narrow tunnel with mere finger widths of clearance on either side. White and red itching spells rippled over him without effect. At the tunnel’s far end he leaped high, grabbed the first of five rings embedded in the ceiling and swung to the next without touching the floor. Each ring anchored a different spell; none reacted to his passage. After the last he dropped onto a beam barely half as wide as his own feet while evading the clatter-alert spells that rippled up and down it. He swiftly strode down its flexing length without losing his balance or triggering any magic. He leaped to another beam and at its end vaulted over a packing case. He landed in the middle of a circle of blue flames where he finally loosed his Shadow. The magic flames went out instantly.

“Very impressive,” Chisaad acknowledged from where he stood in an out-of-the way corner of the room. “Twenty-three separate spell-traps and you didn’t trigger any of them. All while moving faster than I’d have believed possible in such cramped spaces.”

Kirin grinned with the triumph coursing through him and punched his fists in the air. “Yes! I promised you I’d do everything right if you let me be physical too, didn’t I, Magister Chisaad?”

“And you kept that promise,” Chisaad nodded while shutting down the complex assembly of spells. “We’ve determined that your invisibility to magic runs the full range from tiny movement-detectors to full-scale guardian spells, and even hair-trigger-dangerous projectile traps.”

Brimming with confidence, Kirin boasted. “You should let me try a real trap, Magister. Something with an arrow or a spear, instead of these padded sticks.”

“Are those words from your reason, or do I hear your stones talking?” Chisaad inquired warningly. “Pride is one thing, recklessness quite another. How would I explain it to your family if you got your liver impaled?”

Kirin thought about what Pieter or Maia would have to say about that and deflated a little. “I guess that would be a problem.” To himself he thought, I wouldn’t get speared. I can sneak through anything!

“And speaking of ‘a problem,’ I do hope you are being circumspect in what you tell your family about the tests we run here,” the wizard cautioned. “Remember that I have been giving you opportunities that are not generally made available to less than journeyman mages, when you are not even an apprentice yet. I would be severely criticized for that if word got around. The Council might even bar me from teaching any student, much less you.

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